Monday, February 18, 2008

B2B Online Marketing Budgets to go up in 2008

BtoB's "2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans" survey shows 60.1% of marketers plan to increase their overall marketing budgets next year predominantly in online, events and direct mail. Despite the softness in the overall economy only 10.3% plan budget decreases.

The biggest budget increases will be seen in online marketing, with 79.1% of marketers planning to boost their online budgets this year.

Last year, in the BtoB 2007 survey, 62.6% of respondents said they planned to increase their marketing budgets; 29.4% said budgets would be flat, and 8.0% said they planned to decrease their marketing budgets.

In 2008 the primary marketing goal is customer acquisition, cited by 62.4% of respondents, followed by:

Brand awareness (19.3%)
Customer retention (11.7%)
Other objectives (6.6%)

Of those planning budget increases next year:

27.8% plan a 5% to 9% increase in spending
24.6% plan a 10% to 14% increase
12.7% plan a 20% to 24% increase
10.3% plan an increase of less than 5%


BtoB's survey found that the average percentage of the marketing budget spent next year on online marketing will be 33.8%, up from 26.5% in 2007. Among the online areas that will see increases next year are:

Web site development (cited by 74.0% of marketers)
E-mail (70.1%)
Search engine marketing (64.3%)
Video (39.5%)
Webcasting (39.1%)
Banners (36.4%)
Sponsorships (29.6%)
Social media (26.2%)


Of the 19.8% of marketers currently using social media applications:
53.8% use them for thought leadership
40.4% for customer feedback
30.8% for market research
28.8% for advertising
26.9% as a sales channel